Subject: Re: [PATCH] Update hard-coded header dependencies

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 16:31:06 -0700

Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]> writes:

> The fall-back rules used when compilers don't support the -MMD switch
> to generate makefile rules based on #includes have been out of date
> since v1.7.12.1~22^2~8 (move git_version_string into version.c,
> 2012-06-02).
>
> Checked with 'make CHECK_HEADER_DEPENDENCIES=yes'.
>
> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
> ---
> Maybe it's worth switching to plain
>
> 	LIB_H += $(wildcard *.h)
>
> ?  People using ancient compilers that never change headers wouldn't
> be hurt, people using modern compilers that do change headers also
> wouldn't be hurt, and we could stop pretending to maintain an
> up-to-date list.

I agree that it is very tempting to declare that we do not manually
"maintain" the dependency list and force people without -MMD to
recompile whenever any unrelated header changes.  Especially that
this patch only works on the 'master' branch and upwards, and does
not even work on 'maint', let alone 1.9 or 1.8.5 maintenance tracks.

Let's consider the merit of that approach after 2.1 is out.  Thanks.